Russian design

Russian design

Russian design found itself in a state for which the industry had not really prepared. And it’s not just about technology or individual services. The environment has become tougher, the market is more nervous, money is more cautious. Not only the work process is changing, the very logic of the profession is changing.

It is still possible to look at the external market. No one forbade us from seeing how strong studios, products and teams work. The problem is different: seeing and being able to work in the same way are two different things. Many approaches that look like the norm in the global market become a luxury in Russian reality. They require different budgets, different process lengths, different search tolerances, and different costs of error. If you're not building your own project and playing for the long haul in your own interests, it's increasingly difficult to afford that kind of depth.

This is where the main problem begins. Environmental degradation rarely looks like a disaster. It usually looks like a gradual adjustment to reduced difficulty. A little simpler task, a little shorter period, a little less depth, a little more willingness to say: “Well, in general it’s fine.” After some time this is “normal” and becomes the new bar.

Isolation is dangerous not only because it makes something inaccessible. It is dangerous because it changes the criteria of sufficiency. The market is starting to make a worse distinction between strong work and just neat assembly. Complex solutions are harder to sell. Simplification begins to look less like a compromise and more like common sense. And design is gradually returning to a role convenient for the market: quickly, clearly, preferably inexpensively. That is, back to the service. Only now with a more fashionable dictionary, neural networks and the face of a man who allegedly “optimized processes”.

The other side

But there is another side to this story. A harsh environment throws out excess faster. Everything that in calm times could live on inertia begins to fall apart almost immediately in turbulence: bloated teams, weak processes, empty packaging, studios without internal discipline, work that was supported only by observation and familiar tools. Not because “suffering purifies.” This is cheap romance. It’s just that a bad environment very quickly shows where the real design was and where it is a confident imitation.

This is why AI is so revealing. Not as the main theme of the profession, but as a symptom of the environment. In a mature system, it is used to enhance complex work: test hypotheses faster, speed up mechanics, expand research. In a poor and nervous system, it is first used to reduce the cost: cut people, remove depth, produce more than average results. AI doesn't explain anything here and doesn't save anything. It just very quickly shows what the market is leaning towards: increasing complexity or producing crap on an industrial scale.

But here, too, everything is not as stupid as they like to put it. Technology does not “take away jobs.” They simply find themselves in an environment where there is little money, a short horizon and constant pressure on price. And such an environment first uses almost any new opportunity according to the most primitive scenario: simplify, reduce, replace. It's logical. Not noble, but logical. And only then, if someone has enough resources and ambitions, does the technology begin to work as a tool for deepening, and not just optimization.

Therefore, the question “degradation or chance” is posed a little more cunningly than it seems. Degradation begins where the environment accepts its simplification as a new norm. Chance begins where pressure forces the profession to be reassembled more harshly: less unnecessary, less inertia, less hope for ready-made structures, but more understanding, accuracy and responsibility for the system of work itself.

What am I

My answer to all this is quite simple: I believe less and less in design as a service in its old form. Not because services are dead. But because the local market is too easily drawn into the endless production of neat, understandable and quickly paid off crap. When you always work only within such a circuit, it is very easy to begin to confuse busyness with development, and the flow of tasks with moving forward.

Therefore, I am increasingly shifting from servicing other people’s requests to developing my own products. For me, this is a way to stay “in the global game”, to hold a higher bar for myself and not to depend entirely on the logic of the local market, which almost always pushes towards simplification, reduction in cost and a short horizon. It’s unlikely that anyone would allow me to develop my own UI set in a product using custom icons and components, but I have it here:

Your own product gives something that a service almost never gives: a long distance. The ability to make difficult decisions not because someone agreed on the budget, but because you yourself are responsible for the level. The ability to build a system rather than just close a task. The ability to remain globally competitive, even if the environment around you is constantly pulling you back.

I don't idealize this path. Your products do not automatically make you smarter, freer or more successful. There is also enough risk, uncertainty and chances to screw everything up. But at least it's fair game. If you don’t like the rules by which the local market is structured, there’s no point in endlessly complaining about them. It’s much more useful to put together your own game, where you set the pace, difficulty level and quality criteria yourself.

Output

Russian design is now between two scenarios. The first is to lock yourself in the local norm, the eternal reduction in price and the habit of calling simplification sobriety. Second, use the pressure as a reason to reassemble the profession more harshly: with less unnecessary stuff, but with more understanding, responsibility and your own rules.

The main question now is not whether Russian design is cut off from the outside world. The main question is whether it is able to maintain complexity in a tougher and poorer environment. Because it is complexity that the profession loses first. And it is then that it is most difficult to return.

For me the answer here is pretty obvious. If the environment constantly pulls you towards simplification, you need to look for a form of work in which you can maintain complexity yourself. Don't wait for the market to mature. Don't rely on favorable conditions. Don't explain for the hundredth time why normal work cannot cost like a random set of turnkey services.